President Barack Obama, speaking in
the White House's East Room, said Eckert "was an inspiration to me and
to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort
in the hard days ahead."

A week before her death, Eckert met with
Obama at the White House as part of a group of 9/11 families and
relatives of those killed in the bombing of the USS Cole, discussing
how the new administration would handle terror suspects.

Eckert was flying to Buffalo Thursday night to celebrate what would have been her husband Sean Rooney's 58th birthday.

When
he died in the World Trade Center, she became one of the most visible,
tearful faces in the aftermath of the terror attacks.

Carol
Ashley, whose daughter died at the World Trade Center, said the grim
details of Eckert's death are particularly painful to Eckert's friends
among 9/11 families.

"The fact that it was a plane crash, it was
fire, it was reminiscent of 9/11 that way, that's just very difficult,"
said Ashley, a retired schoolteacher from Long Island.

She carried that grief to Congress as she tried to make the government do a better job protecting its citizens from terrorism.Read on.

July 12, 2008

The submarine war off the northwest (Pacific) coast of South America is getting, well, strange. For the last few years, the cocaine producing gangs of Colombia have been having considerable success exporting their product via submarines. About a third of the 600 tons of cocaine coming out of Colombia each year leaves via the Pacific coast. Most of this is being carried in submarines, that move the cocaine to North American. Off the Pacific coast, it's believed that only about five percent of these subs have been caught.

These are not submarines in the true sense of the word, but "semi-submersibles". They are 40-50 foot fiberglass boats, powered by a diesel engine, with a small "conning tower" above the water, providing the crew (of 4-5), and engine, with fresh air, and permitting the crew to navigate the boat. A boat of this type is the only practical kind of "submarine" for drug smuggling. A real submarine would be much more difficult to build, although you can buy commercial subs for a million dollars or so. These, however, can carry only a few hundred pounds of cargo, and not for long distances. Read it all.

When the business relationship began to deteriorate, Nabulsi says,
he also was imprisoned for months and tortured by jailers trying to get
the tapes back.

Now, the tapes could become evidence in a federal lawsuit against SheikIssa
Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a son of the late UAE president and brother of Abu
Dhabi's crown prince. By custom, a member of the Al Nahyan royal family
serves as president of the UAE.

The lawsuit and the tapes could prove embarrassing to the UAE, a
U.S. ally that promotes itself as a pro-Western nation catering to
business travelers and tourists.

The tapes have not been made public but The Associated Press viewed
11 still frames from one of the videos. They showed a man who appeared
to be Sheik Issa beating another man with lumber, firing an automatic
weapon into the sand around him and forcing an apparent cattle prod
into his anus. The victim also appeared to have been partly run over by
a SUV and had salt poured on his wounds.

Here is a highly graphic video of Shiek Issa torturing his business partner, from the UAE Torture website.

Congressmen, Ambassadors, and dignitaries gathered at the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

There is "no greater threat to freedom than communism," said
Dr. Lee Edwards, Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial
Foundation.

Steny Hoyer (D-PA), House Majority Leader, explained that
there are no names on the wall of the Victims of Communism Memorial
because there is no way to list the names of more than 100 million
people who were killed by communism.

Referring to those dictators of communism, Hoyer said, "They
have called themselves revolutionaries, but they have acted out of the
oldest human urge, the urge to dominate their fellow man."

Don Ritter, master of ceremonies for the occasion, said, "make no mistake about it. Soviet communism inspired devastation in Afghanistan and is the root cause of the conflict there today."

According to Ritter, there will be a "major museum" in
Washington, D.C. "to remember and to provide a vehicle for the people
of this country and the world to remember."

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said, "Even in our own country
[communism is] committing acts of violence against Falun Gong. And we
have to stand up and be clear that this is not going to be tolerated."

May 06, 2008

After eight years, the man who tortured and imprisoned his three wives and 19 children is finally going to trial.

A man starved the 19 children under his roof, beat some of them and
their mothers and made the youngsters and two of his three so-called
wives virtual prisoners in their own home, a prosecutor told jurors
Monday as the defendant's long-delayed trial got under way.

Mansa Musa Muhummed, who was arrested in 1999, faces eight counts of
torture – each of which carries a potential life sentence – 11 counts
of willful injury to a child, five counts of inflicting corporal injury
on a spouse and two counts of false imprisonment.

Marva Boddie, the woman who was legally married to Muhummed under state
law – the other two were not – was arrested along with him nine years
ago and pleaded guilty in 2000 to one count of willful injury to a
child.

Her plea agreement calls for probation and a year in custody, but sentencing has been put off until after her husband's trial.

The case against Muhummed has taken years to come to trial, partly
because of a flurry of motions filed by the 55-year-old defendant, who
had been representing himself but recently was assigned a conflicts
defense lawyer.

Muhummed allegedly kept two of his three so-called wives and 19
children – his and theirs – prisoner in their home, torturing seven of
them, prosecutor Julie Baldwin told jurors in her opening statement.

“He would beat their feet ... to the point where they could hardly stand or walk,” she said.

And he justified his actions based on Islamic law, including beating
his wives (Qur'an 4:34), and forbidding them to leave the house, which
Muhammad endorsed according to a hadith quoted in the jurisprudence
manual 'Umdat al-Salik (The Reliance of the Traveler):

The husband may forbid his wife to leave the home because
of the hadith related by Bayhaqi that the Prophet ... said: "It is not
permissible for a woman who believes in Allah and the Last Day to allow
someone into her husband's house if he is opposed, or to go out if he
is averse" (m10.4).

But many unanswered questions remain. Someone had to know about
Mansa Musa Muhummed's activities; why did they not report him for
abusing his wives and children, and for welfare fraud? And why didn't
anyone take him to task for, as some will certainly allege,
misunderstanding his religion so terribly?

In
these scams, the sender of the e-mail says they have been hired to kill
the recipient, and they offer to divulge the identity of who hired them
in exchange for money.

The fee requested is usually in the thousands of dollars.

Some of the more recent e-mails have been sent by "Al-Quaeda Networks" at deadlykillers@yahoo.de.

The
aim of the entire e-mail is to create fear in the recipient and have
money wired to the sender, usually via Money Grams or Western Union.

A search of the Internet has revealed thousands of these scams being perpetrated across the country.

The
Kingman Police Department would like to assure the community that these
are scams and should not be considered valid. Anyone who receives these
threats and any other scam should delete the e-mail and block the
sender.Information on this and other scams, rumors and urban legends also can be found at www.snopes.com.

A woman who works downtown was told in an e-mail Wednesday night that
the sender had been paid by someone to kill her but would renege for a
price.

It said, in part, "Am very sorry for you my friend, is a pity that
this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don't comply. … I
don't have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is
just to KILL/ASSASINATE you and I have to do it as I have already been
paid for that."